Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

Distance

Arizona, January 2266.

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The deathclaw howled in rage, gagging on its own blood. With a final lunge toward the legate, it collapsed forward into knee-deep water. The echo of its roar and the wave its body displaced swept through the deep gash in the earth, bouncing off shiny rock walls. Then all was still.

The boy slid off its back with a splash. The machete in his hand glistened black with blood in the cave's green glow. His knees nearly gave out, and he steadied himself against the beast's side, alert for any sudden movement. None came; it was dead.

"Did it get you?" Joshua asked him.

"I— I think so," murmured Gabriel. "I am alrigh—" he stumbled. Joshua started in suprise, but the boy remained stubbornly upright.

As Joshua approached his apprentice, Gabriel glanced back at the fallen monster behind him. Its head alone was almost as tall as the boy's thirteen-year-old body. A gurgle of laughter escaped his lips, then another.

Within seconds, Gabriel had erupted into hysteria. Joshua could see tears of exhaustion and panic collecting in the boy's eyes, and without thinking, he pulled him into his arms. Such contact was a rarity for them, had to be.

Joshua took the opportunity to glance down at Gabriel's back. The boy had underestimated the severity of his wound: a seeping red diagonal to match the two crossed over his front. There was nothing to be done about it until they had escaped this cave, where light and sanitation were hard to come by.

His forlorn giggles subsided into labored breathing, and Joshua pushed him quickly to arms' length, hands not leaving his shoulders. Joshua would have liked to hold him until the adrenaline surge released its grip, but that wasn't how their relationship worked. Not when the soldiers were already beginning to snicker about their legate going soft, not with Edward's snide remarks about his priorities. Not with all he had to put Gabriel through in training. In the grand scheme of things, one boy wasn't important. The Legion was important. Caesar was important.

Gabriel glimpsed up at the starlight filtering into the crevice from above them. Joshua followed his gaze. They had climbed down to take the sleeping deathclaw by surprise, enticed by the cave's dim neon light. But they had vastly underestimated its size and ferocity. It had nearly killed them both with two swipes of its incredible claws.

Bravely, Gabriel had clambered from a raised ledge onto its back while its attention had been turned to Joshua. He had attempted to hack through its tough hide, but the deathclaw had quickly noticed and began trying to buck him off. Peppered with Joshua's bullets and butchered by Gabriel's machete, it had finally died, but not before shaking the boy up significantly.

Gabriel's breathing steadied. He exhaled into a smirk. "Good kill."

"Indeed, it was. You must have an excellent teacher."

Gabriel laughed again, shaky but no longer hysterical. "If I had such a teacher, he would have been up there in my stead." His tribal accent moved his voice in a cadence Joshua knew as well as his own.

Joshua snorted and shoved him. "Come on, you."

Gabriel was reluctant to leave his kill, but it wasn't as if they could bring it back to Flagstaff. Joshua finally allowed him to cut off a talon for proof. It was nearly five pounds and barely fit in Gabriel's satchel, but it distracted him from his injury.

They continued through the cavern. The deathclaw had gotten in — there had to be a way out. Both kept an eye out for more monsters, but none seemed to be making an appearance.

Gabriel chuckled yet again. "You look ridiculous."

"Why don't you remove that log from your eye and check again?"